Patriarchal Moscow vs. Soviet Moscow

Should you have visited our city just about a century ago and have come to see its panorama from the Vorobyovy Gory at dusk, you'd been impressed by the number of churches with gold domes rushing to the sky. And the crosses would shine, and the wonderful music of the bells would sway over the city.

It was the time of traditions, either religious, connected with church sermons or fasting, or pagan, like Maslenitsa playing, eating pancakes, sleighing or swimming in an ice-hole.

It was the time of brilliant balls, given by Moscow aristocratic families, where all high society would be present.

It was the time of Russian tsars. Romanov dynasty would rule Russia autocratically for centuries. A tsar was known as God' anointed sovereign.

In 1917 everything was gone.

The Soviet government was sure to know best what the Communism should be, and was determined to build it. First the place for it was needed. And later it was found - but the churches were the obstacle, which was definitely to be removed. An enormous part of old Moscow's treasury was destroyed at that time by means of explosions, less bloody than those of Al Caeda's, but no less destructive. The wonderful Saint Saviour was gone in order to give place to a fantastic Palace of Soviets, which was never built though. For a long time there was a steaming hole, called "Moskva" Swimming Pool on the place of a cathedral.

The time for enthusiasts, for fanatics came. They believed blindly in the idea and served it headlong. They widened Moscow streets. They built the "Seven Sisters". They dug the Moscow Metro and built a fantastic station Leninskye Gory, that hung over the Moskva River. They were sure they go to the brightest future through repressions, through the War, through concentration camps - the gloomy grey apartment house on the Moskva quay remembers it all, but it can keep secrets.

The time for reconciliation came at last - and the whirl of changes turned Moscow into a peculiar mixture of what is old and what is more or less new. Now Stalin's dwelling houses stand close to small newly-built churches. There's no more Dzerzhinsky monument on Lubyanka, but no one dares to remove the Mausoleum for it's a part of history, they say. We, Russians, now try to make amends, that makes our city look quite dissimilar, but we don't care. We love it as it is and find it the best in the world.

Stalin's Grey Building on the quay vs. Cathedral of Christ the Savior